Franklin Delano Roosevelt

State of the Union 1937 - 6 January 1937

For the first time in our national
history a President delivers his annual message to a new
Congress within a fortnight of the expiration of his term
of office. While there is no change in the Presidency
this year, change will occur in future years. It is my
belief that under this new constitutional practice the
President should in every fourth year, insofar as seems
reasonable, review the existing state of our national
affairs and outline broad future problems, leaving
specific recommendations for future legislation to be
made by the President about to be inaugurated.

At this time, however, circumstances of the moment compel
me to ask your immediate consideration of: First,
measures extending the life of certain authorizations and
powers which, under present statutes, expire within a few
weeks; second, an addition to the existing Neutrality Act
to cover specific points raised by the unfortunate civil
strife in Spain; and, third, a deficiency appropriation
bill for which I will submit estimates this week.

In March 1933 the problems which faced our Nation and
which only our National Government had the resources to
meet, were more serious even than appeared on the
surface.

It was not only that the visible mechanism of economic
life had broken down. More disturbing was the fact that
long neglect of the needs of the underprivileged had
brought too many of our people to the verge of doubt as
to the successful adaptation of our historic traditions
to the complex modern world. In that, lay a challenge to
our democratic form of government itself.

Ours was the task to prove that democracy could be made
to function in the world of today as effectively as in
the simpler world of a hundred years ago. Ours was the
task to do more than argue a theory. The times required
confident answer of performance to those whose
instinctive faith in humanity made them want to believe
that in the long run democracy would prove superior to
more extreme forms of government as a process of getting
action when action was wisdom without the spiritual
sacrifice which those other forms of government exact.

That challenge we met. To meet it required unprecedented
activities under Federal leadership - to end abuses - to
restore a large measure of material prosperity - to give
new faith to millions of our citizens who had been
traditionally taught to expect that democracy would
provide continuously wider opportunity and continuously
greater security in a world where science was
continuously making material riches more available to
man.

In the many methods of attack with which we met these
problems, you and I, by mutual understanding and by
determination to cooperate, helped to make democracy
succeed by refusing to permit unnecessary disagreement to
arise between two of our branches of government. That
spirit of cooperation was able to solve difficulties of
extradordinary magnitude and ramification with few
important errors, and at a cost cheap when measured by
immediate necessities and the eventual results.

I look forward to a continuance of that cooperation in
the next 4 years. I look forward also to a continuance of
the basis of that cooperation - mutual respect for each
other's proper sphere of functioning in a democracy which
is working well, and a common-sense realization of the
need for play in the joints of the machine.

On that basis, it is within the right of Congress to
determine which of the many new activities shall be
continued or abandoned, increased or curtailed.

On that same basis the President alone has the
responsibility for their administration. I find that this
task of Executive management has reached the point where
our administrative machinery needs comprehensive
overhauling. I shall, therefore, shortly address the
Congress more fully in regard to modernizing and
improving the executive branch of the Government.

That cooperation of the past 4 years between Congress and
the President has aimed at the fulfillment of a twofold
policy - first, economic recovery through many kinds of
assistance to agriculture, industry, and banking; and
second, deliberate improvement in the personal security
and opportunity of the great mass of our people.

The recovery we sought was not to be merely temporary. It
was to be a recovery protected from the causes of
previous disasters. With that aim in view - to prevent a
future similar crisis - you and I joined in a series of
enactments - safe banking and sound currency, the
guarantee of bank deposits, protection for the investor
in securities, the removal of the threat of agricultural
surpluses, insistence on collective bargaining, the
outlawing of sweatshops, child labor and unfair trade
practices, and the beginning of security for the aged and
the worker.

Nor was the recovery we sought merely a purposeless
whirring of machinery. It is important, of course, that
every man and woman in the country be able to find work,
that every factory run, that business as a whole earn
profits. But government in a democratic nation does not
exist solely, or ever primarily, for that purpose.

It is not enough that the wheels turn. They must carry us
in the direction of a greater satisfaction in the life
for the average man. The deeper purpose of democratic
government is to assist as many of its citizens as
possible - especially those who need it most - to improve
their conditions of life, to retain all personal liberty
which does not adversely affect their neighbors, and to
pursue the happiness which comes with security and an
opportunity for recreation and culture.

Even within our present recovery we are far from the goal
of that deeper purpose. There are far-reaching problems
still with us for which democracy must find solutions if
it is to consider itself successful.

For example, many millions of Americans still live in
habitations which not only fail to provide the physical
benefits of modern civilization but breed disease and
impair the health of future generations. The menace
exists not only in the slum areas fo the very large
cities, but in many smaller cities as well. It exists on
tens of thousands of farms, in varying degrees, in every
part of the country.

Another example is the prevalence of an un-American type
of tenant farming. I do not suggest that every farm
family has the capacity to earn a satisfactory living on
its own farm. But many thousands of tenant farmers -
indeed, most of them - with some financial assistance and
with some advice and training, can be made
self-supporting anon land which can eventually belong to
them. The Nation would be wise to offer them that chance
instead of permitting them to go along as they do now,
year after year, with neither future security as tenants
nor hope of ownership of their homes nor expectation of
bettering the lot of their children.

Another national problem is the intelligent development
of our social security system, the broadening of the
services it renders, and practical improvement in its
operation. In many nations where such laws are in effect
success in meeting the expectations of the community has
come through frequent amendment of the original statute.

And, of course, the most far-reaching and the most
inclusive problem of all is that of unemployment and the
lack of economic balance, of which unemployment is at
once the result and the symptom. The immediate question
of adequate relief for the needy unemployed who are
capable of performing useful work I shall discuss with
the Congress during upcoming months. The broader task of
preventing unemployment is a matter of long'-range
evolutionary policy. To that we must continue to give our
best thought and effort. We cannot assume that immediate
industrial and commercial activity which mitigates
present pressures justifies the National Government at
this time in placing the unemployment problem in a filing
cabinet of unfinished business.

Fluctuations in employment are tied to all other wasteful
fluctuations in our mechanism of production and
distribution. One of these wastes is speculation. In
securities or commodities, the larger the volume of
speculation the wider become the upward and downward
swings and the more certain the result that in the long
run there will be more losses than gains in the
underlying wealth of the community.

And, as is now well known to all of us, the same net loss
to society comes from reckless overproduction and
monopolistic underproduction of natural and manufactured
commodities.

Overproduction, underproduction, and speculation are
three evil sisters who distill the troubles unbound
inflation and disastrous deflation. It is to the interest
of the Nation, to have government help private enterprise
to gain sound general price levels and to protect those
levels form wide perilous fluctuations. We know now that
if early in 1931 government had taken the steps which
were taken 2 and 3 years later the depression would never
have reached the depths of the beginning of 1933.

Sober second thought confirms most of us in the belief
that the broad objectives of the National Recovery Act
were sound. We know now that its difficulties arose from
the fact that it tried to do too much. For example, it
was unwise to expect the same agency to regulate the
length of working hours, minimum wages, child labor, and
collective bargaining on the one hand and the complicated
questions of unfair trade practices and business controls
on the other.

The statute of N.R.A. has been outlawed. The problems
have not. They are still with us.

That decent conditions and adequate pay for labor and
just return for agriculture can be secured through
parallel and simultaneous action by 48 states is a proven
impossibility. It is equally impossible to obtain curbs
on monopoly, unfair trade practices, and speculation by
State action alone. There are those who, sincerely or
insincerely, still cling to State action as a theoretical
hope. But experience with actualities makes it clear that
Federal laws supplementing State laws are needed to help
solve the problems which result from modern invention
applied in an industrialized nation which conducts its
business with scant regard to State lines.

During the past year there has been a growing belief that
there is little fault to be found with the Constitution
of the United States as it stands today. The vital need
is not an alteration of our fundamental law but an
increasingly enlightened view with reference to it.
Difficulties have grown out of its interpretation; but
rightly considered, it can be used as an instrument of
progress and not as a device for the prevention of
action.

It is worth our while to read and re-read the preamble of
the Constitution and the article I thereof which confers
the legislative powers upon the Congress of the United
States. It is also worth our while to read again the
debates in the Constitutional Convention of 150 years
ago. From such reading, I obtain the very definite
thought the the members of that Convention were fully
aware that civilization would raise problems for the
proposed new Federal Government, which they themselves
could not even surmise; and that it was their definite
intent and expectation that a liberal interpretation in
the years to come would give the Congress the same
relative powers over new national problems as they
themselves gave Congress over the national problems of
their day.

In presenting to the Convention the first basic draft of
the Constitution, Edmund Randolph explained that its
purpose "to insert essential principles only, lest the
operation of government should be clogged by rendering
those provisions permanent and unalterable which ought to
be accommodated to times and events."

With a better understanding of our purposes, and a more
intelligent recognition of our needs as a nation, it is
not to be assumed that there will be prolonged failure to
bring legislative and judicial action into closer
harmony. Means must be found to adapt our legal forms and
our judicial interpretation to the actual present
national needs of the largest progressive democracy in
the modern world.

That thought leads to a consideration of world problems.
To go no further back than the beginning of this century,
men and women everywhere were seeking conditions of life
very different from those which were customary before
modern invention and modern industry and modern
communications had come into being. The World War, for
all of its tragedy, encouraged these demands and
stimulated action to fulfill these new desires.

Many national governments seemed unable adequately to
respond; and, often with the improvident assent of the
masses of the people themselves, new forms of government
were set up with oligarchy taking the place of democracy.
In oligarchies, militarism has leaped forward, while in
those nations which have retained democracy militarism
has waned.

I have recently visited three of our sister republics in
South America. The very cordial receptions with which I
was greeted were in tribute to democracy. To me the
outstanding observation of that visit was that the masses
of the peoples of all the Americas are convinced that the
democratic form of government can be made to succeed and
do not wish to substitute for it any other form of
government. They believe that democracies are best able
to cope with the changing problems of modern civilization
within themselves, and that democracies are best able to
maintain peace among themselves.

The Inter-American Conference, operating on these
fundamental principles of democracy, did much to assure
peace in this hemisphere. Existing peace machinery was
improved. New instruments to maintain peace and eliminate
causes of war were adopted. Wider protection of the
interests of the American republics in the event of war
outside the Western Hemisphere was provided. Respect for,
and observance of, international treaties and
international law were also strengthened. Principles of
liberal trade policies, as effective aids to the
maintenance of peace were reaffirmed. The intellectual
and cultural relationship among American republics were
broadened as part of the general peace program.

In a world unhappily thinking in terms of war, the
representatives of 21 nations sat around a table, in an
atmosphere of complete confidence and understanding,
sincerely discussing measures for maintaining peace. Here
was a great and a permanent achievement directly
affecting the lives and security of 250,000,000 human
beings who dwell in this Western Hemisphere. Here was an
example which must have a wholesome effect upon the rest
of the world.

In a very real sense, the conference in Buenos Aires sent
forth a message on behalf of all the democracies of the
world to those nations which live otherwise. Because such
other governments are perhaps more spectacular, it was
high time for democracy to assert itself.

Because all of us believe that our democratic form of
government can cope adequately with modern problems as
they arise, it is patriotic as well as logical for us to
prove that we can meet new national needs with new laws
consistent with a historic constitutional framework
clearly intended to receive liberal and not narrow
interpretation.

The United States of America, within itself, must
continue the task of making democracy succeed.

In that task the legislative branch of our Government
will, I am confident, continue to meet the demands of
democracy whether they relate to the curbing of abuses,
the extension of help to those who need help, or the
better balancing of our interdependent economies.

So, too, the executive branch of the Government must move
forward in this task, and, at the same time, provide
better management for administrative action of all kinds.

The judicial branch also is asked by the people to do its
part in making democracy successful. We do not ask the
courts to call nonexistent powers into being, but we have
a right to expect that conceded powers or those
legitimately implied shall be made effective instruments
for the common good.

The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the
denial of essential powers of free government.

You task and mine is not ending with the end of the
depression. The people of the United States have made it
clear that they expect us to continue our active efforts
in behalf of their peaceful advancement.

In that spirit of endeavor and service I greet the
Seventy-Fifth Congress at the beginning of this
auspicious new year.